WEEK 2:
Glenn Tippy
SOS Commodification Week 2 Sem Ticket
4/10/17
WC:479
“But in reality, golden rice is far less efficient than available alternatives, and the promoters of golden rice themselves admit that it produces only 35 micrograms (vitamin A) per gram of rice. Biodiversity and ecological agriculture offer us alternatives that are 35-600 percent richer in vitamin A than golden rice…..The knowledge of these alternatives has always been in women’s hands, farmlands, and control. Today, this knowledge and practice are being displaced by a biofortification that will actually decrease vitamin A availability and create profits for ever-growing corporations.”(Shiva 121)
“And when I cook, I never measure or weigh anything, I cook by vibrations. I can tell by the look and smell of it. Most of the ingredients in this book are approximate. Some of the recipes that people gave me list the amounts, but for my part, I just do it by vibration.” (Smart-Grosvenor xxxvii)
“The discovery of this man, and the realization of what he still represents today for the Indians who are fighting for clean agriculture, in harmony with their own traditions and with biodiversity was a very important experience for me – the demonstration that a ‘dialogue between realms’ (modern science and traditional science) can exist and be fruitful. Howards attitude contains the basic premise for creating this dialogue: Listening. If you know how to listen, you know how to conduct a dialogue.”(Petrini 178)
“Professor Brush’s work makes it plain that nearly all the methods of the Andean farmers are based upon the one Principle of Diversity. In their understanding and use of this principle, they have developed an agriculture much more sophisticated, efficient, and conservative of the soil than our own – and one that is also much more likely to survive crisis. How finely this agriculture is attuned to the needs and circumstances of the community becomes apparent when professor Brush describes recent attempts to change it by the introduction of Industrial technology and ‘Improved’ potato varieties. Such change involves a gross simplification of the agriculture itself as well as a drastic complication of the economy. It requires a cash economy and credit, favors the larger producers, and threatens to destroy both the human community and the ecological viability of a farming system that is ‘the result of thousands of years of natural and human selection.’” (Berry)
Throughout this week’s readings the theme of modern science vs. traditional science was evident. Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor speaks of how she doesn’t use measurements when cooking, she uses intuition, an innate understanding of the ingredients she’s working with. Such an understanding can only come from experience, experience gained in the kitchens of her youth as well as through her own experimentation. With its laundry list of complex instructions and formulations a recipe can very much appear to be a scientific document. There’s a sense that Vertamae views strickly following a recipe as a task designed for a science lab and not a kitchen. She’s not uptight about her cooking, she simply takes a step back, listens to what the ingredients are saying to her, and in doing so creates a platform for dialogue between her and the food. The concept of taking a step back and listening is an important one. Given the state of the world, recognizing traditional science/knowledge is more important than ever, but sadly the corporations that dominate the global market have proven that they are incapable of opening their ears and listening to our planet and the people inhabiting it. Petrini said, “I think this was the underlying element which many years ago captivated the intellectual honesty of Howard, who could do nothing but listen and learn, having realized that he had nothing to teach.”(Petrini 178). The above quote speaks to the role that corporations such as Monsanto and Dupont should be taking, but sadly aren’t. Throughout history white colonizers, have viewed ecosystems and traditional knowledge systems as archaic and worthy of change. Only an entitled individual possessing a capitalist mindset could stroll into Peru, see thousands of varieties of potatoes that have been cultivated and co-evolving with the climate for thousands of years and think they could improve on that. Same could be said about companies pushing biofortified rice in India, claiming it will eliminate vitamin A deficiencies, trying to take on the role of white knights, when in reality the traditional knowledge systems in place have countless plants and ingredients that provide exorbitantly higher counts of vitamin A than the golden grains being pushed by conglomerates purely the sake of profits. What’s needed is a step back. If we take a step back and listen to the vibrations of our earth, bodies, and traditional knowledge systems, we will have theopportunity to recognize that the knowledge possessed by agrarian cultures provides the framework for the inventions of our modern globalized food systems. And if they could only take a step back, forget about their bottom line, and lose their pseudo godlike white patriarchal capitalistic ideologies, they would recognize that the knowledge their seeking to improve upon is already out there in the rural communities around the world. All they have to do is take a step back, listen, and feel the vibrations.
Citations
1) Petrini, C. (2013). Slow food nation: why our food should be good, clean, and fair. New York, NY: Rizzoli Ex Libris.
2) Berry, W. (1978). The unsettling of America.
3) Shiva, V. (2016). Who really feeds the world?: The failures of agribusiness and the promise of agroecology.
4) Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
Week 3:
Glenn Tippy 4/17/17
SOS Commodification Week 3 Seminar Ticket
WC:533
“Molloy is not talking about virtual slavery, or near slavery, or slaverylike conditions, but real slavery. In the last fifteen years, Florida law enforcement officials have freed more than one thousand men and women who had been help and forced to work against their will in the fields of Florida, and that represents only the tip of the iceberg. Most instances of slavery go unreported. Workers were ‘sold’ to crew bosses to pay off bogus debts, beaten if they didn’t feel like working or were too sick or weak to work, held in chains, pistol whipped, locked at night into shacks in chain-link enclosures patrolled by armed guards.” (Estabrook xix)
“Hoe cake got its name from the hoe. Slaves would cook batter on the flat edge of the hoe in the fields for the noonday meal. You don’t have to cook it on the metal part of the hoe cause we ain’t slaves no mo’.” (Smart-Grosvenor 17)
“Slavery had a tremendous influence on food and labor systems around the world and was the central pillar of capitalism’s racial caste system until it was widely abolished in the late 19th century.” (Holt-Gimenez and Harper 2)
“Washington’s Task Force Against Trafficking of Persons reports our state is a hotbed for the recruitment, transportation and sale of people for labor. The report indicates several factors make Washington prone to human trafficking: International border with Canada, abundance of ports, vast rural areas, and dependency on agricultural workers.” (Washington State Office of the Attorney General)
Throughout history racism and slavery have kept afloat the very institutions and industries that are more often than not praised for their success and advancements in their designated fields. The racism and slavery that we are talking about is so multifaceted, at times it’s so blatant that there is no way you can not see it, and other times it can be subtle and appear to be non existent to the untrained eye. We’re talking about interpersonal racism, internalized racism, institutional racism, structural racism, racialization, and reverse racism to name a just few. One can look back at the slavery happening in the tobacco and cotton fields of the US, the emancipation proclamation, jim crow laws, the civil rights movement and think that racism and slavery is a thing of the past, but that just isn’t the case. It’s been so industrialized into every facet of our modern lives, education, housing, food security, that to change it, would call for not just a revamping but a complete rebuild of our modern day institutions. Go to the vineyards of Eastern Washington and ask the owners about their laborers and pickers, and you’ll get to experience them awkwardly and painfully trying to dance around the topic. Go to the Seattle Tilth Alliance conference and you’ll have the opportunity to hear farm owners bitch and moan about the minimum wage increase, as if their the victims for having to pay their workers more, (not to mention that the increase bill is absolutely not far enough reaching). Travel anywhere in our country and you’ll see and hear the same thing. How flawed is our food production system that these large scale agriculture operations are receiving huge subsidies, using slave labor, and or perpetuating slave like conditions, dumping these subsidized goods overseas, and out-competing agrarian communities and economies around the world. All the while receiving praise from the heads of industry. And you know what? Travel elsewhere in the world and the same things happening. That cup of darjeeling tea you enjoy in the morning or afternoon? Yeah well that comes from self proclaimed plantations, or that chocolate bar? That comes from cacao farmers who make nothing, most of whom have never even tasted chocolate. If you ever have the opportunity to work at or visit a coffee roaster, you’ll have the opportunity to hear stories or see for yourself the spent bullets and ammunition casings that are found in the bags of fresh green beans, something considered an industry normal. Where there’s money to be made there will be exploitation, and just because it’s built into every facet of our lives, doesn’t mean we have the right to ignore it. The journey of dismantling racism and the exploitative nature of our society starts with conversation, and activism. School classes like the one we’re in provide a stage for discussion, books like Tomatoland, Vibration Cooking, and The Darjeeling Distinction get the the ball rolling, and it’s our job as the readers to keep it rolling. We need to be imaginative. We need to examine everything under a critical pedagogic lense, and become active participants in the movements aimed at dismantling the systems that are truly worth of change.
Citations:
1)Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
2)Estabrook, B. (2012). Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC.
3)Share. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/backgrounder-dismantling-racism-in-the-food-system/
4)Attorney General. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2017, from http://www.atg.wa.gov/human-trafficking
Week 4:
Glenn Tippy
SOS Commodification Week 4 Sem Ticket
WC:467
4/24/17
“Additionally, while the Farm Bill does not deal directly with immigration policy, the combination of a dysfunctional immigration system and corporate power, exacerbates the exploitation of migrant and seasonal agricultural workers. As such, the new Farm Bill should explicitly protect the rights of all food system workers regardless of their immigration status and protect them from fear of losing their jobs or deportation.” (Elsheikh 6)
“A squirt of white liquid splashed on his leg–a minor occurrence to pickers. But the supervisor screamed as if scalded and immediately tore off his clothes. ‘I mean pulling off his pants–not even unzipping them,’ said Cisneros. ‘People were telling him that there was a lady out there, but he didn’t care. He kept screaming and dove into the ditch and started rubbing water all over himself.’” (Estabrook 62)
“Mama made eleven dollars a week and at Easter Mrs. Krader would sell us hats, pocketbooks, gloves and stocking on credit. The hats were always at least ten ninety-five and the dark stockings (red fox, etc.) cost more than the beige. Mama would pay a dollar or two each week until it was paid off. Sometimes it would take damn near till the next Easter.” (Smart-Grosvenor 34)
“Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide on the planet, and its increasing use over time in the United States aligns well with the increasing rates of autism determined by the Centers for Disease Control. Based on the known mechanism of glyphosate toxicity, we hypothesize that a pregnant woman’s exposure at midpregnancy to glyphosate-formulated herbicides (GFH) may produce, in her unborn child’s brain, anatomic alterations of cortical neuron layering remarkably similar to those found in the brains of humans with autism. Glyphosate’s known ability to chelate manganese ions combined with evidence of severely depleted serum manganese in cows exposed to glyphosate makes it likely that glyphosate would induce manganese deficiency in humans, interfering with the function of manganese-dependent enzymes. In particular, this would affect the maternal pituitary’s manganese-dependent Protein Phosphatase 1 (PP1) enzyme, resulting in a significant reduction in maternal serum levels of Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone (TSH). A study of mid-pregnancy maternal TSH serum levels in human mothers has found a statistical correlation of reduced TSH to increased risk of autism in offspring. Since insufficient thyroid stimulation by TSH or by iodine deficiency would both induce hypothyroidism, effects of iodine deficiency can be expected to emulate effects of TSH deficiency. Cortical neuron disarrangements have been produced in the brains of offspring of rat dams fed an iodine-deficient diet, and such foci of disordered cortical neurons are characteristically found in human autistic brains. While the research literature on glyphosate’s endocrine disrupting effects is limited, diverse evidence from animal studies reveals effects that suggest impaired thyroid function. If our hypothesis can be substantiated by a focused research effort, it would provide further justification for reducing or, ideally, eliminating glyphosate-formulated herbicide exposures in pregnant women.” (http://www.hoajonline.com/autism/2054-992X/3/1)
After reading the assigned text for this weeks seminar, I was left feeling a lot of things. The image of the field boss screaming and ripping his pants off after getting a squirt of pesticides on his leg in Tomatoland has stuck with me. That story is haunting, it speaks to the absolute mistreatment that marginalized fieldworkers are exposed to everyday. I find it disgusting to knowingly subject people to those toxic chemicals, when you yourself are horrified of the potential consequences of having some spray on your leg. Sure this story takes place in Florida but I guarantee people are working in similar conditions across the US and around the world. It speaks volumes to the inequities being faced by all of these marginalized folks. These inequities don’t stem from a field boss or supervisor, but from the very institutions that run our modern society. Its Institutionalized and build into the very framework of our everyday lives. What example is our government giving these massive corporations by having barriers that are meant to exclude marginalized people of color and women from the very things everyone should have access to, such as land ownership, proper education, food security, and workers right to name just a few. The message they’re giving these corporations is that these folks are less than human, and as a result aren’t worthy of basic human rights. It makes me sick. Why do we allow large corporations such as Monsanto, Dupont, and Walmart to lobby and throw their money around, effectively influencing the bills, laws, and acts that are meant to protect the very people they are exploiting. All of this to help their bottom line, it’s criminal, and yet the heads of these companies are the very people rubbing elbows with our world leaders. What can we do to change all of this? I was once on the receiving end of a story, and in this story there was a farmer who was a huge advocate for roundup. This farmer was very outspoken, and at a huge event, with news cameras on him, he drank a cup of roundup to prove how safe it was. Myself and the people who heard this story were in shock and instantly asked the person telling it what happened to him? We were told that in the short term he was fine, but learned that he died an early death due to brain cancer… Of course the connection between his brain cancer could not be linked to the roundup, but it makes you wonder. Maybe that’s what we should do, take all the heads of these corporations and ask them to consume their tainted products, or spray them head to toe with their own toxic chemicals for months on end. I think their reactions would speak volumes.
Citations:
1)Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
2)Estabrook, B. (2012). Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC.
3)Share. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/backgrounder-dismantling-racism-in-the-food-system/
4)Seneff, S. (2016, January 18). Is there a link between autism and glyphosate-formulated herbicides? Retrieved April 24, 2017, from http://www.hoajonline.com/autism/2054-992X/3/1
Week 5:
Glenn Tippy
SOS: Commodification Week 5 Sem Ticket
WC:546 4/30/17
“In every spiral of life, from infant’s first cry to an elder’s last breath, cedar proved inextricably woven into the lives of the First Peoples….. Infants were often born onto mats of woven cedar bark strips and then wrapped in the soft-shredded inner back….. In some villages, family members placed the afterbirth in a large cedar stump to ensure a long life or in a cedar’s crown to endow the child with bravery…. People were often laid to rest in cedar coffins or dugout canoes that included prized possessions. Hoisted onto a mortuary pole or stilts or lashed to a tree, the remains bore witness to lies intertwined with Long Life Maker, the Tree of Life, wester red cedar.” (Excerpt from a book in progress titled Tahoma: The Place and Its People, A Natural History of Mount Rainier National Park. by Jeff Antonelis-Lapp)
“The irony is a terrible one. An ecological philosophy that tells us to live side by side with other creatures justifies itself by appealing to an idea, an idea of a higher order than any living creature. An idea, finally-and this is the crushing twist to the irony-which no creature except Man is capable of comprehending. Every living creature fights for its own, individual life, refuses, by fighting, to accede to the idea that the salmon or the gnat is of a lower order of importance than the idea of the salmon or the idea of the gnat. But when we see the salmon fighting for its life, we say, it is programmed to fight; we say, with Aquinas, it is locked into a natural slavery; we say, it lacks self-consciousness.”( Coetzee 54)
“But Mashpee people are Mashpee—the pond, the river, the land(Deetz 3)
“For Akwasasne people, much like many other native people, eating from the earth is about more than diet, it is about the recipes, methods of harvest, the cycle of the seasons, and holidays. It is identity.”(Deetz 4)
After reading the required text for this weeks seminar I was left with more questions than answers. The concept of identity was evident to me throughout all of the readings, and how our modern train of thought has limited and hindered our understanding of where we fit in relation to non-human animals, as well as the ecological web that surrounds us all. The idea of the ecological managers also really stands out to me. I had to ask myself, in regards to scientific understanding of animals, how limited is the train of thought held by the people conducting these tests? Coetzee says, “scientific behaviorism recoils from the complexity of life.”(63) And I find that to be true, it’s the idea of belonging to a higher order that makes one think that because humans are self-conscious beings, and animals lack self-consciousness, that we can understand them as we understand manmade machines. That’s the wrong way of thinking. I really think it’s the questions being asked, and the concept of where we fall within the web of life that limits our understanding. The discussion that takes place at the dinner table regarding the chimpanzee who insisted on placing its picture in the pile of humans, really sparked this idea within me. One could think that the chimp wants to please its captors, but a more critical question would be, does the chimp recognize we are free to come and go as we please? By placing its picture with the humans, is it asking to be set free? Those are the questions that should be asked. Yes it is more philosophical, yes it is more or a moral/ethical question, but those are the types of questions that will give us a greater understanding, rather than abstract models of experimentations that ultimately limit our perceptions. For many years I have advocated that behaviorism is an utterly inappropriate model for working with folks on the autism spectrum. I have actually always compared Applied Behavioral Analysis to how people train animals. It is such an utterly limited and disrespectful approach, it fails to ask the most important questions. It asks how can we train this individual (whether human or non human), to lose specific behaviors in attempt to adhere to the ones we value more in society, rather than asking what exactly are they trying to communicate? Only with the ability to place oneself into the shoes of another being, can we start on the journey of understanding. Another concept that really stuck out to me was the idea of belonging to or not belonging to. The idea of identifying oneself by what we don’t do rather than what we do do. What constitutes our entire existence? The Mashpee are the land, the Akwasasne are the land. The fish warden may view himself as a steward of the land, protector of the fish. But how lacking is this self identity when you’re willing to prosecute a human who is the fish, who is land? It’s a mindset that is a result of a separation from the land. When the western red cedar, the fish, and the land are so inextricably woven into every facet of one’s existence, it isn’t a side by side partnership, but rather, makes for one entity.
Citations:
Share. (n.d.). Retrieved May 01, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/more-than-a-bingo-hall-a-story-of-mashpee-land-food-and-sovereignty/
Coetzee, J. M., Gutmann, A., Garber, M. B., Singer, P., Doniger, W., & Smuts, B. B. (2016). The lives of animals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Excerpt from a book in progress titled Tahoma: The Place and Its People, A Natural History of Mount Rainier National Park. by Jeff Antonelis-Lapp
Week 6:
Glenn Tippy
SOS: Commodification Week 6 Sem Ticket
WC:591
5/7/17
“The slaves were just adapting to a language that wasn’t their own. They were from many tribes, and plus the masters didn’t talk too tough themselves. So they took the English language and did what they could with it and it was beautiful. Black people are the only people in this country who speak English and make it sound Musical. Anyhow, back to adaptivity, being the granddaughter of a slave who adapted to the unnatural ways of his master, I, too, soon caught on and there I was eating fruit with a fork.”(Smart-Grosvenor 66)
“Slavery and agriculture have had a close relationship in Florida since European settlers first buried seeds in its sandy soils. But the institution really took root when Britain gained control of the region in 1763, and planters from the Carolina colonies moved into the St. John’s River area in the northeast part of the state to raise crops of rice and indigo. By 1860, just before the start of the Civil War, 44 percent of Florida’s 140,000 residents were slaves. When the system abruptly ended in 1865, cooperative local sheriffs obligingly arrested gangs of African American men, typically on bogus vagrancy charges, and rented them out to landowners in ‘convict lease programs,’ a good deal for both the municipality collecting the fees and the farmers.”
(Estabrook 82)
“African mythology, origin myths, and spiritual practices all revere the centrality of nature. Stories of trees, animals, birds, flora, and natural elements all had their origins in preserving and conserving the consequential relationship between humans and their environment. Moreover, African ecological thought utilizes land as part of the ritual of how to honor spirit. These ritualistic expressions of an eco-spiritual worldview were imprinted on the daily lives of enslaved Africans and impacted beliefs about food, farming, family, and forest.” (Bandele & Myers 2)
“Spirituals and work songs, rooted in both the slavery era and the West African societies from which most African-American slaves were originally taken, provided cultural sustenance to African Americans in the midst of intense racial oppression. They first came to be valued by northern white audiences in the late-19th century. Later, folklorists began collecting (and eventually recording) traditional southern music. John and Alan Lomax recorded southern musicians (African-American, white, and Mexican-American) for the Library of Congress. They recorded “Long John,” a work song, sung by a man identified as “Lightning” and a group of his fellow black convicts at Darrington State Prison Farm in Texas in 1934. Black prisoners working in gangs to break rocks and clear swamps relied on the repeated rhythms and chants of work songs (originating in the forced gang labor of slavery) to set the pace for their collective labor. “Long John” mixed religious and secular concerns, including the notion of successful escape from bondage, a deeply felt desire of both slaves and prisoners.”(http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5758/) Source: Afro-American Spirituals, Work Songs, and Ballads, ed. Alan Lomax (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song, AFS L3). Sung by “Lightning” and a group of Afro-American convicts at Darrington State Prison Farm, Sandy Point, Texas, 1934. Recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax.)
The concept of slavery and cultural identity was evident to me throughout all the readings this week. Particularly how groups of people have adapted to a culture they are unfamiliar with, while at the same time holding onto and passing on the cultural identity that they hold close to their heart. I’m instantly reminded about a section from a book written by Gregory Michie titled Holler if You Hear Me. You see Michie understood that cultural identity is something to hold dear to one’s heart, although more often than not it’s hard to maintain such cultural identity in a country which is projecting the dominant ideology of white patriarchal capitalism through a number of different influential institutions. He understood that for his students to question their community and society as a whole, they had to find causes that were meaningful to them. He understood that for them to identify aspects of their community/society worth changing, they first had to identify with themselves and the culturally rich community in which they came from. The key concept of an ongoing struggle with identity as well as identifying with a specific group that accompanies these students throughout their attempts to assimilate into american culture, while attempting to make sense of their own is beautifully represented in a quote from one of Michie’s students Linda when she says, “People here don’t see me as an American, even though I was born here and have lived here all my life. But when I go to Mexico, they call me a gringa and all that, so I don’t really feel Mexican, either. I guess I don’t feel either one.” (Holler If You Hear Me 84). I think these readings, and the quote I just provided really speak to the perseverance of these oppressed groups of people. Their contributions have never fully been acknowledged, whether in regards to agriculture, our food systems, they role they played in building the US economy, music, and the list could go on for pages. Blues music has its roots in slavery, when Lightnin Hopkins sang, “He’s John, John, Old John, John, With his long clothes on, Just a-skippin’ through the corn.” (Lightnin Hopkins Long John) what was he actually saying? I instantly imagine a slave running away from the field he was forced into. The power of these songs, has paved the way for modern music as we know it. But it’s roots aren’t intended for pop culture consumption, but rather an oral history, created to preserve the stories handed down through the generation in an attempt to hold onto the cultural identity that makes them them, to never forget their past. It makes me think of the pickers in Immokalee Florida, running towards getaway cars to escape slavery. The Coalition of Immokalee workers uses similar tools such as imagery, story, theater, etc. to convey valuable messages. Much like the significance that blues music has had in preserving a people’s history, so to do the songs, mythology, rituals, and eco-spirituality of the Africans enslaved throughout the US. They have left a lasting mark on our ecological practices, and understanding of agriculture. All of these folks were forced into adapting to a culture dominated by whites, all the while holding onto important aspects of their cultural identity, and their legacy lives on. It’s always important for me to remember that I don’t have to always pick up a book to learn about the past or present. Their history persist in song, dance, story, theater, agriculture, food, spirituality, and communities around the world.
1)Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
2)Estabrook, B. (2012). Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC.
3)Myers, Bandele (n.d.). Retrieved May 07, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/the-roots-of-black-agrarianism/
4)”It’s a long John”: Traditional African-American Work Songs. (n.d.). Retrieved May 08, 2017, from http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5758/
Week 7:
Glenn Tippy
SOS Commodification Week 7 Sem Ticket
WC:439
5/15/17
“Almost everything a tomato farmer buys to raise a crop is petroleum based-Chemical fertilizers, pesticides, plastic row covers, plastic bins, and fuel for tractors and trucks-and prices rise in lockstep with a barrel of oil. Little wonder that bands are none too eager to lend money against a future harvest.” (Estabrook 129)
“In this two-child, three-car society, people take better care of their cars than they do their children. Filling themselves up with all them pills. (A little boy told me that Jack and Jill went up the hill to smoke reefer and pop pills.) Talking about they can’t feed all the people here. Why? Why not? This is the richest country in the world. Any citizen should be given at birth the guarantee of a life free from hunger. And tell me, what is a second-class citizen? You either a citizen or you’re not. And that reminds me about my forty acres and a mule. I’ll take the forty acres and a Jeep.”(Smart-Grosvenor 71)
“As a farmer, she helps bring a broader perspective to the issue. The risk of contaminating the Missouri River could impact the water supply for “The Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as the Bakken Pipeline, is an oil infrastructure project planned to bring fracked oil from North Dakota through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, where it will then connect with existing rail and pipeline networks, transporting highly volatile crude oil to the Gulf Coast.” a significant portion of the nation’s farm land. “If you are an organic farmer making a stand against GMOs [genetically modified crops] and pesticides, this is the same fight,” she explains.”(Deetz 2)
“Today the food system is even more reliant on cheap crude oil. Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource, which is nearing its depletion phase. Moreover, at a time when we should be making massive cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in order to reduce the threat posed by climate change, the food system is lengthening its supply chains and increasing emissions to the point where it is a significant contributor to global warming.The organic sector could be leading the development of a sustainable food system. Direct environmental and ecological impacts of agriculture ‘on the farm’ are certainly reduced in organic systems. However, global trade and distribution of organic products fritter away those benefits and undermine its leadership role. Not only is the contemporary food system inherently unsustainable, increasingly, it is damaging the environment.” (http://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-04-01/why-our-food-so-dependent-oil/)
It’s hard for me to think about how interwoven our lives are with petroleum based products. How the prices of our food can rise and fall, in direct correlation to the price of oil, and its many forms. It’s not just our food, but every facet of our lives. If you ever try to go a day without oil, what you’ll find is that it’s all but impossible. Even those with the best intention to avoid use of any petroleum based product will fail, because it has crept its way into even the most unassuming products. Recognizing this is one thing. Now let’s talk about the environmental degradation that occurs along oils journey into our lives. It’s not a matter of if a pipeline will burst or a spill will occur, it’s a matter of when and how extensive? Sure the exxon valdez oil spill was catastrophic, an event that the ecosystems of Alaska are still recovering from, but the little fuel spills that almost every single boat in the US contributes to, drop by drop, far exceeds the exxon valdez every year. Heavy metals find their ways into our waters, fertilizers contribute to the turbidity of our lakes and rivers, pesticides cause the “silent spring” that Rachel Carson wrote about in 1962, and pesticides are causing birth defects in the women of the Florida tomato fields, the coal trains going through rural areas are having adverse effects on the communities health, fracking, mountaintop mining, global warming, and the list of horrific degradation to people and the land goes on and on and on. Sure there are many factors that contribute to morbidity of the list I have laid out above, but oil is most certainly an underlying driving force. When 2 parts oil, 3 parts plastic, 5 parts synthetic, one part sterile soil, 6 parts gmo seed, 1,000 parts marginalized workers = “the food that feeds the world”, we have a big problem. The question is what can we do? People have recognized for quite some time now, the adverse effects of the prolonged degradation of the earth and its communities, yet, there are driving forces in the positions of power that perpetuate it. When it’s so ingrained into every facet of our everyday lives, how can we change it? How can we say let’s outright reject oil? What’s left after we reject it? It wouldn’t even be a revision, it would be a new start. Maybe that’s what we need? You can tell I’m left with more questions than answers? But I find hope knowing that there are minds around the world thinking about these very questions.
Citations:
1)Share. (n.d.). Retrieved May 15, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/everyone-is-downstream/
2)Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
3)Estabrook, B. (2012). Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC.
4)Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil. (2005, March 31). Retrieved May 15, 2017, from http://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-04-01/why-our-food-so-dependent-oil/
Week 8
Glenn Tippy
SOS Commodification Week 8 Sem Ticket
WC:382
5/22/17
“Early on, Kirk faced some competition for funding from farmers who wanted to build housing for their workers on their own land. Recalling incidents of being run off property by county sheriffs back in his student days when he was trying to interview the children of North Carolina farmworkers, Kirk adamantly opposed employer built housing. ‘I don’t want them in control’, he said. ‘If you live down some dirt road where there’s an armed security guard to keep people out, problems can develop. Here, if someone from Florida Legal services wants to come down and meet with you, there’s an office set aside. The opportunity for involuntary servitude is this community is pretty slim. There is always someone to reach out to.’” (Estabrook 165)
“Now I have done a lot of research on food and found out that Long Island ducks are not from Long Island at all. They are the descendants of ducks imported from Peking around 1870. Georgia peaches are descendants of peaches brought from China. Potatoes are native to South America and were taken to Europe by the Spanish explorers ‘when they discovered South America.’ They discovered ‘Indians and potatoes and squash and peppers and turkeys and tomatoes and corn and chocolate.’ They took everything back to Europe except Indians. The settlers who later came from Europe brought the descendants of these vegetables to North America. Now, if a squash and a potato and a duck and a pepper can grow and look like their ancestors, I know damn well that I can walk around dressed like mine.”(Smart-Grosvenor 118)
“History has granted significant insight into the collective creativity required to develop solutions for Black land loss. The legacy of resistance must play a role in the process by which proposed solutions are examined. Recreating individualistic land ownership models, which resettle status quo discrimination from the post-colony culture into the Black consciousness, must be met with scrutiny and critical evaluation.”(Davy, Horne, McCurty, & Pennick 6)
“One of the first real NGO strategies to use forestry to stem land loss in the Southeast can be credited to the Ford Foundation’s community-based forestry demonstration program. The program was initiated in 1999 to address a wide array of issues in communities characterized by high poverty rates. Against the background that most African-American landowners owned small tracts of forestlands that had both ecological and economic potential, another important objective of the Ford Foundation’s initiative was to build individual and community wealth. The Foundation’s undertaking was guided by the question of whether community-based forestry was an effective and sustainable strategy for forest restoration and conservation, community strengthening, land loss reduction, and poverty alleviation (Wyckoff-Baird, 2005). The major goal of the Foundation’s project in the Southeast was to foster accelerated diffusion of best-practice strategies for forest and other forest-related resource-management, while engaging local communities in the decision-making process. Beyond building the conceptual framework in which many of the current players are operating, the Foundation’s initiative also connected black forest landowners in the south with landowner groups across the country by building organizational capacity, peer learning, participatory research, networking, and policy development around the idea of community-based land development (Wyckoff-Baird, 2005). African-American Land Loss and Sustainable Forestry in the Southeast: An Analysis of the Issues, Opportunities, and Gaps (https://www.joe.org/joe/2013december/a2.php)
When I think about the readings for this week and the quotes that I have chosen, I am reminded of all the barriers that are in place that perpetuate the mistreatment of marginalized people of color. After reading the Black Agrarian: Resistance article I thought back to the section in TomatoLand that talks about the community housing projects constructed in attempts to stifle the involuntary servitude that happens in the Florida tomato fields. While it seems like the Everglades Community Association and Steven Kirk have the best intentions at heart, something feels off to me about it. The idea of putting restrictions on these people’s living situations isn’t right. No guests after a certain hour, controlling who can enter the compound, high/strict expectations, etc etc. It doesn’t seem to me like they are truly free. Even Estabrook compared it to on-campus housing, which, from my experience, is anything but liberating. You constantly feel like big brother is watching you, worried about if your lifestyle will get you evicted or even worse, arrested. These are adults who have come from other parts of the world, all of whom have tons of life experience, only to be treated like adolescents who need to be looked after? No that’s not right. I really like what all the organizations and groups in the Food First article were doing to help facilitate community and personal independence. If history has proven anything, it is that these folks can’t rely on anyone but themselves. But why weren’t these viable for the long term? The solution is so multi faceted that it may seem daunting, but I think the foundations have been laid down, and that these communities of color will have to look back critically on the organizations and groups of the past, look at their strengths and weaknesses, and mend what needs mending, in regards to operations and financials. I really like the idea of demonstration farms, sites, programs, etc. I think it can be really empowering. I know there is a lot more to all of this, but I really think a good starting point is critically looking back at these organizations of the past, evaluating their missions, and learning about the barriers that were, and continue to be in their way, in attempts to find ways around said barriers.
Citations:
1)Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
2)Estabrook, B. (2012). Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC.
3)Share. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/black-agrarianism-resistance/
4)African-American Land Loss and Sustainable Forestry in the Southeast: An Analysis of the Issues, Opportunities, and Gaps. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2017, from https://www.joe.org/joe/2013december/a2.php
Week 9:
Glenn Tippy
SOS Commodification Week 9 Sem Ticket
WC:411
5/29/17
“Instead of taking chocolate or berries or coffee or bananas out of one cultural context and placing it in another for profit, we should instead recognize and respect the cultural contexts that our foods come from: who ate them and why? What were traditional ways of preparing it? How were they supplemented or complemented by other foods?” (Esquibel 2)
“Eckerton Hill Farm, as his company is called, shows that with clever marketing and a hell of a lot of work, there is still a place for small farms that grow great-tasting tomatoes for regional markets in a manner that is sustainable both for the environment and for the people who work the land. Given the vulnerability of Florida’s industrial tomato agribusinesses to competition from Mexico and the wild price swings in the commodity market, it could be argued that Eckerton provides a more viable business model for commercial tomato growers, a model that is sustainable in more ways than one.”(Estabrook 170)
“Collard greens according to the National Geographic are prehistoric. The Romans took them to France and England. The Romans are said to have considered them a delicacy. I know I consider them a delicacy. They are very rich in minerals and vitamins. They are biennials.”(Smart-Grosvenor 129)
“There is growing awareness that the profound changes in the environment (eg, in diet and other lifestyle conditions) that began with the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry ≈10000 y ago occurred too recently on an evolutionary time scale for the human genome to adjust. In conjunction with this discordance between our ancient, genetically determined biology and the nutritional, cultural, and activity patterns of contemporary Western populations, many of the so-called diseases of civilization have emerged. In particular, food staples and food-processing procedures introduced during the Neolithic and Industrial Periods have fundamentally altered 7 crucial nutritional characteristics of ancestral hominin diets: 1) glycemic load, 2) fatty acid composition, 3) macronutrient composition, 4) micronutrient density, 5) acid-base balance, 6) sodium-potassium ratio, and 7) fiber content. The evolutionary collision of our ancient genome with the nutritional qualities of recently introduced foods may underlie many of the chronic diseases of Western civilization.” (Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century) (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/2/341.full)
“It’s more interesting to talk about the whole lily family and say, did you know that lily bulbs are also part of the onion family? It’s like the stream of consciousness way of thinking about food when I’m just cooking it.” (Quote from Mario Batali)
Upon reading this week’s required texts, I am struck by the idea of regional cooking, the use of traditional ingredients, and the methods used to grow them as well as prepare them. I have spoken about this topic briefly in a previous tasting lab write up, but find it relevant to expand upon. I think taking a close look at the traditions and methods of the past, as well as different communities around the world is one of the most powerful alternative to the current state of our agriculture and food systems. Becoming a student of these more traditional practices is, in my opinion, the best way to arm yourself against our modern institutions. Only by understanding the countless communities around the world, who have such a more intimate and rich historical connection to the land, than the modern US society, can we begin to critically question the institutions of power and start to draft up appropriate alternatives. The acquisition of knowledge makes for a richer life in all of its many facets. This includes the food we consume. The quote I provided from Mario Batali, at first glance may seem simple and short. But I find it to be extremely complex, it speaks to a fundamental flaw of our modern society in regards to the disconnect between food, culture, land, and knowledge that seems to be ever expanding with every new generation. Knowing the history of something, arming yourself with knowledge in its many forms, empowers us. I think it’s the best way to engage the world around you. Putting a name on things, being able to draw a connection between an onion and a lily, helps to draw connections between us and others. So many of us, myself included, at times, eat without thinking. When we fail to critically think about certain foods in historical contexts, we miss out on such a rich opportunity to not only connect with the food we are eating, but the people and communities the world over as well. There are lessons to be taught in every ingredient, every bite of food, every sip of liquid, that can help guide is to see how inextricably connected people and place have been for millenniums. I think that only by diving headfirst into the past, and examining the lessons it has to offer, can we begin to develop appropriate alternatives for the future. And what better way to do so than by learning with your fork?
Citations:
1)Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
2)Estabrook, B. (2012). Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC.
3)Cordain, L., Eaton, S. B., Sebastian, A., Mann, N., Lindeberg, S., Watkins, B. A., & O’Keefe, A. J. (2005, February 01). Loren Cordain. Retrieved May 29, 2017, from http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/2/341.full
4)Share. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/decolonize-your-diet-notes-towards-decolonization/
Week 10:
Glenn Tippy
SOS Commodification Week 10 Sem Ticket
WC:480
6/5/17
“I’m tired of not having a decent bathroom. I’m tired of being poor. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of walking these maggoted streets. If decent living is middle class, then they can sock me some from the middle.” (Smart-Grosvenor 163)
“Pacific and Six L’s (since renamed Lipman), the two large tomato growers on whose fields pickers who worked under the infamous Navarrete slavery gang had once toiled, took the lead. Almost immediately after the agreement was signed, they began to work with the coalition to find practical ways of introducing a new Code of Conduct to the Florida tomato industry on a limited basis.”(Estabrook 191)
“This interview with Rosalinda Guillen highlights the interlocking destinies of farmers and farmworkers and the ways in which the land and its people can resist the exploitation and discrimination of migrant farm work while offering a deep, restorative land ethic. It reminds us that the knowledge and skills that farmworkers have gained over lifetimes and generations of farming is a precious resource essential for a new food system.”(Food First 1-2)
“The number of H-2A visas issued annually has risen steadily since Rangel’s damning 2007 statement, yet the permits have never covered more than 10 percent of available fieldwork jobs in any given year. The fact that at least half of American fieldworkers are undocumented immigrants reveals a massive gap between the nation’s need for low-wage workers and its sanctioned supply. And to be perfectly clear, in this context, “immigrant” refers to a specific group: 93 percent of all immigrant farmworkers in this country hail from Mexico.”(Article from The Modern Farmer: The High Cost of Cheap Labor) (http://modernfarmer.com/2017/02/migrant-farm-workers-the-high-cost-of-cheap-labor/)
Throughout this week’s required readings what really stood out to me was the quote I used from Tomatoland which speaks to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the large tomato growers working together to find ways of introducing a new code of conduct to the Florida tomato industry. I immediately thought, how can you trust those slimeballs? I honestly think they should have any right to influence and manipulate the code of conduct taken away from them. If history shows anything, it’s that these large companies, are only looking out for one thing, themselves. And now that they had some pressure put on them, they finally caved and agreed to the coalition, but only apprehensively after putting up a fight. They knew damn well there were slaves and other marginalized undocumented people working in their fields. But due to the way they had the system set up, they could turn a blind eye and claim ignorance. Is it not obvious that they now want to jump right in and and start figuring out how to implement this new code of conduct? Do they really want to prevent this from happening again? Or do they really just want it to work in their favor? Manipulate it to fit their interests, under the guise of cooperation and social justice? Which brings me to Trader Joe’s. I wish I knew more about this company, but I had a classmate in a previous class who was adamant about how terrible a company they were. And after reading the final portion of Tomatoland, I agree with him even more. They operate under the veil of being a more healthy alternative to other large supermarket chains. But in reality they have all the same highly processed products, just re-packaged to make them look healthier. Trader Joe’s doesn’t even have their own factory where they make their branded product, but rather sources them and re-packages them. And they keep it all hidden under lock and key, because they want customers to build a loyalty to their brand. And the big companies partnered with Trader Joe’s don’t want you to know either, because why would they want customers to know they could get the same product for a few dollars cheaper at Trader Joe’s as opposed to going to Safeway and paying more for the same exact product in different packaging? It’s just an added level of secretivity that makes me question their practices. And after reading about how they refused to even speak with coalition members, and refused to pay an extra penny per pound of tomatoes my thoughts on them were reinforced. I had to google where they stood in regards to the coalition members requests, and learned that they did in fact agree to the requests of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in 2012, but I’m sure only after kicking and screaming the whole way.
Citations:
1)Grosvenor, & Vertamae Smart. (2011). Vibration Cooking. University of Georgia Press.
2)Estabrook, B. (2012). Tomatoland: how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC.
3)The High Cost of Cheap Labor. (2017, February 23). Retrieved June 05, 2017, from http://modernfarmer.com/2017/02/migrant-farm-workers-the-high-cost-of-cheap-labor/
4)Share. (n.d.). Retrieved Jun 6, 2017, from https://foodfirst.org/publication/unbroken-connection-to-the-land/